Vintage Wine Shipping Hooey
Boy, it has been long time since I’ve seen this kind of hooey. Even the Wine & Spirit Wholesalers and their shills haven’t been making the argument of late that there is any evidence that minors are buying wine online in any significant number.
Yet here comes Lisa Hutcheson, in a letter to the editor in the Indianapolis Star, trying to sell the idea that "10 percent of underage drinkers buy their alcohol online".
Hutcheson went so far as to doctor an already bogus quote. For a long time the Wine & Spirit Wholesalers Association along with a number of wholesaler-backed front groups were quoting a National Academy of Sciences study:
"Surveys of underage purchase of alcohol over the Internet or
through home delivery show that small percentages (10 percent) of young
people report obtaining alcohol in this manner."
Hutcheson went so far as to REMOVE the "home delivery" part of the quote.
Of course, had she read FERMENTATION, would have realized that there is NO study anywhere that links minors to purchasing wine on the Internet.
Hutcheson is the director of the Indiana Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking. While I’m positive she means well, I’m disappointed she would choose to misrepresent what the National Academy of Sciences said in a report that itself misrepresents reality.
Tom,
Please keep fighting this fight!!! In Minnesota we just had an incident where an older male bought alcohol for minors and one of the girls ended up dieing because of alcohol poisoning. This is the real threat to underage drinking, not Pinot Noir sales via the Internet. If the Wholesalers have their way, lawmakers will gloss over stories like the one I mention above. How about a bill that steps up the penalties on purchasing for minors. Why don’t wholesalers go after this???
Keep the blog posts coming on this Tom, you’re efforts have and will pay off.
-David